Emergence
by oneiromancer242
Summary: One-shot sequel to "Double Trouble". The Maximoff gang convene for dinner, and talk over the past - and look to the future.


**A/N : One-shot fluff for anonymousscifan, who wants to see a family reunion with Peter, his siblings, and the two little horrors that are his twin daughters.**

Watching her sister-in-law amuse her nieces, one sat either side of her on the floor, Angela grinned with pleasure and wondered how Wanda managed it. She was the only person who could make her two hyperactive daughters sit down and be quiet. She took a sip of her wine, said to the woman on the floor

"You can keep them if you want you know"

Wanda laughed, reached to ruffle two little heads of coppery hair, and shook her head

"You'd miss these two little angels. But they can come stay with me any time they like"

"You shouldn't say things like that, I might take you up on it"

The second they heard the front door close, the twins were on their feet again and racing each other, landing wrapped one each around their father's legs. At eleven years old they were at just the right height that they would head-butt him in the gut every time they did that, and Peter made a pained face as the two little heads impacted, before leaning down to scoop both of them into his arms and hug them tightly.

"How's my two little terrors? Not giving your Aunties too much grief I hope?" he beamed at them, set them one either side of him on the sofa, "Where's Lorna?"

"Cooking. Dinner's almost ready"

"Oh thank god for that, I'm starving" he said, squeezing the two girls to his sides, "How about you kids? Hungry?"

Both nodded vigorously, before a look passed between them and as one they had launched themselves on their father and begun an assault of tickling that soon had him begging for mercy, absolutely incapacitated by twenty little fingers. Hardly able to form a coherent sentence when they had finally stopped, but managing to give his sister a venomous look and gasp

"Why did you have to tell them I was so ticklish?!"

Wanda offered him wide, innocent eyes, then giggled. In truth she could see that the two girls were genuinely a massive handful, but she still delighted in them – and in seeing them reduce her twin to a mess of twitches and helpless laughter the way she used to when they were that age. It made her a little sad, on the odd occasion, to see him so happy with the children, who somehow had her red hair despite neither of their parents sharing it and took after their father so strongly with their boundless mischief and energy. Wanda had never married, never found anybody she felt like she could share her life with, and like Lorna had no children – though Lorna still might, some day, being so much younger than them. Having her little nieces around was a pleasure, but it always reaffirmed to her how much work it took to look after children, work that perhaps she wasn't really cut out for. As though reading her thoughts, her brother had managed to get his breath back from the tickle assault and asked her.

"Didn't you ever think about having any kids, Buttface?"

"Knowing my luck I'd end up with a little speedster to try to keep in hand," she smiled slightly sadly, "And no – I'll just borrow yours"

"Oh yeah you get to be Fun Auntie Wanda then give them back full of sugar!"

"You'd do the exact same thing if she did have children," Angela piped up, returning from the kitchen with the rest of the bottle of wine, refilling hers and Wanda's glasses and offering it to her husband. He shook his head firmly, gave her a look

"When was the last time you saw me with a drink in my hand, honey?" he asked. Angela chuckled, leaned to kiss him on the forehead before settling down again

"Your fortieth birthday?" she said innocently, "What, are the girls so bad they've driven you to sobriety?"

She gave him a saucy wink, and he somehow resisted the urge to flip her off. She did have a point, but it wasn't quite the girls who had put him off alcohol permanently, in fact they hadn't found out about them until several weeks after the occasion in question. They'd decided to all go away for the weekend to a hotel upstate to celebrate the twins turning forty, and perhaps influenced by not wanting to think of herself as old, Wanda had instigated a game of Never-Have-I-Ever which had resulted in Peter getting through a bottle and a half of bourbon, and in Angela finding out an awful lot about her husband that she would never let him live down. He'd been incredibly sick the next morning however, so much so that Angela had waited until the nausea calmed down, then taken advantage of the sedative power of food over him to get him to just go back to sleep until he felt better. Three weeks later, it had been Angela's turn to spend time throwing up in the mornings, and they'd worked out the dates to find that the twins must have been conceived on their father's birthday. She had missed the odd glass of wine for the next nine months, Peter on the other hand had not touched a drop since then, having no desire whatsoever to nearly send himself into hypoglycaemic shock by spending the morning puking ever again.

"Dad, how come you and Auntie Wanda don't look the same?" Ruth asked suddenly. Rachael glanced up from where she had been picking at a hole starting in the knee of her father's jeans, gazed at him with the question repeated in her eyes.

"Don't you kids pay any attention in science class?"

Angela laughed at him, shook her head kindly, was about to explain when Lorna cut her off calling them through to the kitchen for dinner. It had been far too long since they had all been together – even last year, when the two older twins had turned fifty, they had not managed to all convene like this. She wished Magda and Erik could have made it, but for now was content to look around the table and feel thankful for the little family she had somehow ended up with. Lorna looking tanned and gorgeous with her dark green hair pulled back in a ponytail, one of the girls either side of her laughing uproariously as their Auntie repeatedly moved their cutlery away from their hands when they went to pick it up – whilst her own metal manipulation was not as powerful as Erik's, she could still do a great deal, though these days she mostly used it like that – to amuse herself and others. She'd taken a teaching post at Washington University only the previous Fall, finally deciding she was done with long research trips and getting eaten alive by mosquitos, and wanting to be close by for her now elderly parents. Wanda opposite her, a fetching streak of silver in her hair now and kind spurs of wrinkles from frequent laughter pulling out around her eyes, so much happier somehow than she had been when she was younger. It did her good to be around her family, now that she had retired from active work, though she still lived with her team and provided supervision to the next generation of recruits. It always amazed Angela not just how good Wanda looked for her age, but conversely also how much older than her brother she looked. It hadn't been so noticeable until they had hit their forties, but Peter still hardly looked a day over thirty, considering retirement himself now but mainly so that he could spend more time with the children, still more than strong enough to rule over the Academy gymnasium with ease. She supposed he might show his age more if he hadn't had silver hair in the first place, might be going gray by now, but even so her husband still looked miraculously youthful for a fifty-one year old.

Happy to simply be with them all, Angela had watched them laugh and talk around the table, refilling glasses and enjoying Lorna's cooking, until the two girls had begun to yawn, and had been toddled up to bed, their father returning not long after to rejoin the happy group and take another helping of the delicious tiramisu Wanda had contributed.

"It's a good thing your kids don't eat like you" Lorna smiled, "That'd get expensive"

"Oh believe me they're bad enough anyway, seriously I have no idea what they do with it all, and this is coming from me"

"Have they shown any powers yet?" Wanda asked, "I think they're around the age you and I started, aren't they?"

"Just about – I think you girls got a head start on me though. But no, nothing as yet. Looks like we managed to make a couple of regular old humans somehow"

"I think I'm kind of glad about that," Angela said quietly, looking around to see three pairs of dark eyes regarding her with an unspoken question, "Well, it means they won't have the trouble we all did, doesn't it?"

"It's not so bad for Mutants now though," Lorna smiled, "Not since Dad quit causing trouble and started defending us in a better way. Well, a more sensible way anyway – I'm still not sure I like having a politician in the family"

"I guess – don't you wonder what kinds of gifts they might develop though?"

"I want them to be able to throw energy" Wanda said decisively, finished her glass and poured another, "That's obviously the best kind of gift"

"Umm, excuse me!" Lorna laughed at her tipsily, "Metal control is way more useful than that!"

"Just because you can stir four cups of coffee at once doesn't make you cool" Wanda scoffed, but gave her younger sister a kind wink

"They could have electrical powers, that would be much better than both of yours" Peter suggested, eyed the leftover dessert and considered it. If the ladies were going to spend the evening getting drunk then he might as well indulge his own vices too – and he certainly wouldn't be joining them.

"Or speed" Angela suggested, "Wouldn't that be useful too?"

Peter shuddered, shook his head, swallowed a huge mouthful,

"Um, no" he told her, "That would be the worst thing that could happen to us. They're already uncontrollable Angie, imagine if they were zooming around at the speed of sound too?"

"Are you actually having a fourth helping there?"

"Yeah, and? I thought I told you, my retirement plan is to get fat. I'm getting on with it" he offered his youngest sister a grin, "And really, I couldn't think of anything worse than twin speedsters, just imagine all the trouble they'd get into together!"

"Because you and Wanda *never* got into any trouble together…" Lorna told him sarcastically, reached over and squeezed his hand fondly, "But you're probably right. One supersonic bottomless pit in the family is enough"

To be honest, whether or not the girls would express any sort of gifts was starting to worry Peter a little. It was almost time to choose a high school for them, and the last thing he wanted was to enrol them somewhere normal and then have to uproot them and move them to the Xavier Academy if they did turn out to be Mutants after all. Their mother felt the same, knew how hard it had been to move schools at such an awkward age and didn't want to put her children through it. Whilst Xavier had kindly offered to take Ruth and Rachael on as students even if they were human, neither of their parents really wanted that – after all, two human children in a school full of Mutants might feel just as isolated as they had done when the circumstances had been the opposite.

"Are you really going to retire?" Lorna asked, "Who's going to look after the gym when you go?"

"How about Velocity?" he suggested, "She's nearly 21 now, and she knows the workings pretty well. I'm sure with a little help she could take over from me slowly, then I could stay home with the girls more often. I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but my top speed's definitely gone down and I'm getting tired a little easier, it's probably time to hang up the goggles before I hurt myself. Not for a while yet though"

"When did you get so sensible?" Wanda snorted at him, squirmed away from a poke in the side. Her brother grinned in response, shrugged.

"Kids have a way of giving you a perspective, I suppose" Lorna answered for him, smiled kindly at the pair of them. "Besides it's about time you took a load off Angela, don't you think?"

"You kidding? She's such a Momma Bear she makes our Mom look weedy!"

"Speaking of, I should go and check on them" Angela smiled, gave her husband's shoulder a squeeze and left him with his sisters whilst she crept up the stairs to peek in through the slightly open door and make sure her girls were okay. As she had expected, they had not settled down to bed for long, but what she had not expected was to see them sat together on the floor passing a book between them. Without touching it. She gulped, watched for a few more moments whilst the girls playfully tried to outdo each other, stifling giggles with their hands, then left them and returned downstairs.

The siblings had relocated to the lounge, Lorna and Wanda draped into armchairs, Peter stretched out comfortably on the sofa. Obligingly he made space for her, holding out his arms for a hug and frowning as he saw the look on her face. She held out her wineglass to Lorna, who refilled it and was shocked to see her down most of it before she flopped down into her husband's arms.

"What's up, honey, are the girls okay?" he asked, concerned, glad when she had nodded, taken a deep breath and turned to him with a look of dazed surprise

"They're fine," she said, a little dreamily, "Can you call the Professor in the morning?"

"Sure, why?"

"So we can get Ruth and Rachael enrolled at the Academy" she smiled. There was a moment of silence, then she was thrown sideways as her husband bolted upstairs, swiftly followed by his sisters. Angela laughed quietly, shook her head, and got up to follow the posse of stampeding Maximoffs upstairs to where her girls would no doubt be irritated at being caught, but glad to show off their gifts to their proud, loving family.


End file.
